This invention relates to customer premises equipment (CFE) that is enabled to autonomously call a telecommunications server, including a Stored Program Computer System (SPCS).
As CPEs are built with increased computational power, it has become desirable for them to communicate regularly with an SPCS server both to exchange data and to update their local configuration and programming scripts. Such communication is most sensibly conducted over the pre-existing Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to which both the CPE and the SPCS are connected.
It is desirable that communication between the CPE and the SPCS not unduly interfere with the CPE's conventional use as a telephone. For this reason, it would be inappropriate for the SPCS to initiate a call to the CPE because, in the absence of a CPE ring-suppression mechanism, the CPE would ring and thereby misleadingly summon its user. It is therefore desirable for the CPE to autonomously call the SPCS on a regular basis or in response to specific events.